The Sky Cannot Ignore Us
by nb41
Summary: When Bilbo's daemon settles, the Shire isn't sure what to make of her.


For this prompt at comment_fic: 'Things out of Place', The Hobbit, Bilbo, no hobbit has ever had a predator for a daemon – until Bilbo Baggins

There doesn't seem to be, that I can find, conclusive information on whether or not Pullman's daemons ineed/i to eat, or if they do so out of occasional obedience to their own natures (eg. Pan catching insects to munch on). So I've left it somewhat ambiguous here.

Tolkein fans, I am woefully unlearned in the ways of Tolkein lore beyond the films. I apologize if any of this seems off.

* * *

Bendis favors birds when Bilbo is young and she can still change. Thrushes, larks, starlings, grackles, magpies. She'll occasionally take other shapes, but she likes being able to fly, and doesn't care to be an insect. Sometimes, very rarely, she'll be a flying squirrel.

The day she settles he's unloading the grain into the storage room. He nearly drops the sack on his feet as the feeling hits him, like a loose joint he hadn't known was on his mind finally snapping into place. He comes outside, and she's perched on the back of the cart.

She's about the size of a robin, or a little bigger, though not nearly so plump as they can be. Her feathers are gray on her back to the top of her head, white on her chest fading to pale gray at her belly, and black in a mask around her eyes, on her wings, and through her long tail.

They watch each other for several long seconds, then Bilbo hefts up another sack. "So that's it then?"

She flicks her tail. "I think so."

"Well then. Very nice."

"Thank you."

When he's done, they go inside, and his mother and father rejoice and they have an early dessert of peach and cranberry cobbler.

He doesn't understand the strange looks she gets when they stride about the shire. At first he thinks it's her coloring, but eventually he realizes that what everyone is interested in is her hooked, black beak.

"Quite the beak she has," one auntie comments during tea. Bilbo chooses to interpret it as a compliment, and smiles his thanks. The auntie's mouse daemon watches Bendis, who is perched up on top of a cupboard, with obvious unease.

He's fetching linen and thread for his mother from the market when one grandfather asides to another, "I bet she could break a squirrel's spine with that beak." His tone is too loud for Bilbo to have heard on accident, but he feigns ignorance.

Later, as he's gardening, Bendis perches on the edge of a water bucket and inspects her reflection. "Why does my beak worry them so?"

"Oh, it doesn't worry them, just all the other bird daemons have little seed beaks. Yours is a great, fine beak for cracking chestnuts, I'm sure."

"Nuts are not very tasty."

"Well you can crack them for me, then, and we'll get you fat crickets."

She keeps looking at herself in the water while he works.

It's Old Horace who first names her for what she is out loud, and not until Bilbo is a grown Hobbit. She's riding on Bilbo's shoulder as Bilbo walks down the road, and when they pass by Horace's gate, he says, "Butcher bird," and spits to the side.

Bilbo stumbles to a halt. "P-pardon?" he stutters, as surprised as he is outraged.

Horace nods at Bendis, and she fluffs up in irritation. "Your girl there. She's a shrike, ain't she?"

"Well, I-yes."

He grunts and turns back to his raking. "Hobbit with a bird of prey. What's next," he mutters. "Wolves, is what. Foxes."

Bilbo can't think of anything to say. It's been one thing to grow up with the sense that everyone watches Bendis out of the corer of their eye; it's quite another to have her compared to a wolf.

Horace's daemon, a bright red chipmunk, twitches her nose at the two of them, then chitters in an unfriendly manner and scampers to the house stoop. From this safer position she chides them until they move on.

Bendis clicks her beak. "That was very rude," she complains as they continue to the market.

"Quite," Bilbo agrees.

The first time he finds her larder he very nearly passes out.

It wasn't that he didn't know she kept one. He knows this the way he knows many things about her, like that she prefers to perch on high points to see around herself and let everyone know she's present, and that her claws are insufficient for taking large meals, so she has to use her beak. He's never intruded on it, though, the same way she's shown no interest in the family's larder. He's known it's close-it would have to be, because even with the two of them always pushing the limits of how far they can separate, there is a point they've not yet managed to get past.

He's weeding around the overgrown blackthorn bush at the side of the garden when he catches a smell, like something sweet and rotten. It's not the right time of year for flowers or berries, and after judicious sniffing he peers into the tangle. Bendis lands on the topmost branch and cocks her head at him.

There are insects, which he expects-beetles and grasshoppers and crickets and bees-speared on smaller thorns. On the larger, longer spikes there are voles, shrews, mice, lizards. Those are a surprise.

And there's also a sparrow.

He steps back, bile rising in the back of his throat, and needs a moment to catch his breath.

Bendis flares her wings in response to his distress. "What is it?" she asks. She sounds genuinely concerned.

_How could I know my own soul so little?_ he thinks. "I-it's just, I've not seen you take a bird before."

She's some time in responding. Her shrewd black eyes are inscrutable. "They are more filling than the insects."

"Right. Of course." Her calm bleeds to him, and he shakes himself out. She's a bird of prey, after all. She can't deny her own nature any more than he can deny her.

He looks around himself. As accepting as he has learned to be, he knows he can't let anyone else in the Shire find out about this. She gets enough sideways looks, even though no one ever sees her eating anything but bugs.

"I'll see if mother would mind if I plant that nice hedge I was looking at up around here, yes? Then it'll be more private."

She preens one wing. "Oh yes, that would be nice."

* * *

_Lanius excubitor_ - The Great Grey Shrike


End file.
